Dead Boy Detectives: Ghost buddies, one gay, one bi, solve afterlife mysteries. With Luke Gage and WW1 soldier bonus

 

A growling, snarling World War I soldier -- played by Chris Pereira -- chases two teenage boy ghosts through the British Museum.  The intellectual Edwin surmises that his gas mask is cursed: they'll have to destroy it to restore him to wholeness, so he can go on to the afterlife.  They'll need the Minor Arcana, Volume 4, but the athletic Charles can't find it in his magic bookbag.  

With the ghost-monster in hot pursuit, they run through a mirror, but end up in a hotel, not back in the office.  Edwin explains that it's hard to locate the right mirror-dimension when you're being chased by a gas mask monster.  

Flashback to the Dead Boy Detectives office a few days ago: A World War I nurse explains that she's been hanging aroud the British Museum long after her death to help the many lost souls from her era enter the afterlife.  But one has been cursed and turned into a monster.  She hires the boys to help him.

Left: Chris's butt

Back in the present, the boys rush through the hotel, find another mirror, and end up in their office.  The monster follows!   Charles manages to tear his gas mask off -- the snarling monster underneath spews blood all over and tries to stab him. Meanwhile Edwin finds the right book, says the incantation, and the gas mask bursts into flames.  Back in human form, the ghost is calm, but confused.  The boys tell him that he 's dead, still fighting a war that ended over 100 years ago. 

Left: Chris's cock.  I know he only appears in this episode, but where else are you going to see it?

Uh-oh, Death is coming to guide him to the afterlife.  The boys have to hide, or she'll take them, too!

That's a lot of world-building in five minutes, but it comes while the boys are being chased, assaulted, threatened, and zapped about, so it goes down easily.  

The Dead Boy Detectives, a paranormal take on the common British "boy detective" genre, appeared in a number of comics and limited edition graphic novels during the 1990s and 2000s, all taking place in Neil Gaiman's Sandman universe.  Edwin, the intellectual one, died in 1916, when some boarding school bullies tried to scare him by pretending to offer him as a sacrifice to Satan.  The spell worked, and he was sent to hell.  

He stayed until 1989, when some of the residents of hell escaped and laid waste to a boarding school. The athletic Charles was killed in the ruckus.  He would be going to the Sandman-world version of Heaven, but he decided to wait and hang out with his new ghost-buddy.  Now they are detectives, helping lost souls with unfinished business, lost memories, or curses that prevent them from moving on. They must keep a low profile and not perform much magic, to avoid detection from Death and an afterlife "Missing Souls" bureacracy.

Spoiler alert: In the comics, Edwin is gay, and Charles is bisexual.  They don't date each other, however: who said any two random gay/queer dudes must automatically be into each other? 

I watched the first episode of the tv series to see if the pair, now played by the considerably older George Rexstrew and Jayden Revri, were heterosexualized.

The answer after the break

David Boreanaz and Friends: A tortured vampire, a fundamentalist FBI agent, a homophobic ghost, and a porn video

 Born in Buffalo in May 1969, David Boreanaz graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in cinema in 1991 and moved to L.A. to start his film career. Instead, he found his way onto Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-99).

Buffy Summers is The Slayer, the "one girl in all the world" with the power to kill the vampires, demons, and other evils who keep escaping from the hellmouth located in suburban Sunnydale, California, while trying to negotiate high school. 

Her scoobies include science nerd Xander (Nicholas Brendan, left); his girlfriend, a 1000-year old vengeance demon;  witch-in-training and eventual lesbian Willow; and  Willow's doomed, bury-your-gays girlfriend.

Not a lot of beefcake in the bunch, but the writers took care of that by giving Buffy lots of boyfriends, including two feuding vampires, the conflicted, tortured Angel (David Boreanaz, top photo), and the sassy punk rocker Spike (James Marsters).  

Literally tortured.  The writers kept trying to out-do themselves in thinking of creative ways to torture Angel.

I liked some of the adventures, such as when everyone in town had to sing instead of speak, or when grinning men who fed on fear started floating around.  And Buffy gave us two indispensable terms for analyzing tv shows, scoobies and Big Bad.  

The attitude toward LGBT people was a bit old fashioned.  Xander, upset because a lady demon rejected him, announces that he's going to go gay. Willow explicitly states that she was straight, but changed to gay.  Their handler shuts them all down, proclaiming that there's no time to worry about "orientations" when they're facing the most severe crisis of all time (every season).

In 1999  Angel left Sunnyvale, except for a few guest appearances, to start his own paranormal detective agency, in Angel (1999-2004).  His scoobies included Cordelia, a reformed high school Mean Girl; the half-demon Doyle (Glen Quinn),  and Wesley (Alexis Denisof, left), a "rogue demon hunter" -- at least in the first season.  Glen Quinn died, and there were many defections and replacements, doubtless because this was not a fun, tongue-in-cheek paranormal adventure.  

I had to keep watching due to a partner who was a big fan, but it got very, very dark.  Sure, Cordelia used to be a Mean Girl, but did that justify putting her through excruciating physical pain in every episode?  I insisted that he fast-forward past  the scene where Wesley's girlfriend spends five minutes dying, in the awareness that she has no soul, so she's headed for extinction. This is supposed to be entertainment?  F*k the Sadness. 

After Angel, David finally managed to break into movies.  I didn't see any of them, and probably won't.  These Girls (2005): high school girls blackmail a "slightly older hunk," who happens to be married, into having sex with them?  In 2005, David was 36.  But at least he gives us frontal and rear nudity.

Explicit David dick after the break

Kelvin sees a ghost: A Kelvin/Keefe romance

  

This story takes place shortly after the "blink and you miss it" sex scene in The Righteous Gemstones Episode 2.6.  

Kelvin didn't understand what was happening to him.  He was the son of world-famous mega-church pastor Eli Gemstone.  He appeared before 13,000 people at the Salvation Center every week, plus the millions watching him on tv.  He was a role model for thousands of Christian youth.  And hadn't he always stressed the importance of keeping your body pure?  You work out, you eat right, and you stay away from sexual temptation.  Why else would he surround himself with a God Squad of muscular men? 

And Keefe, his best friend, housemate, and assistant youth pastor for the last year?  Of course they loved each, as Christians; they called each other "Brother."  But this was so much different from the love he felt for his real brother and sister.  What did it mean?

His hands were injured and in bandages, so Keefe had to feed him, bathe him, dress him, even hold his penis while he peed.  This morning he was standing naked in his dressing room, and Keefe knelt in front of him to help him pull up his underwear...and it just happened, with no forethought, instinctively, as if it was an ordinary part of their day.  He had never in his life had an orgasm so intense.

Afterwards Keefe was unphased: he continued helping Kelvin dress, said "Nice!" (referring to the act?), and booped him on the nose.  Kelvin wanted to kiss him, he desperately wanted to kiss him, but instead he moved away and acted like nothing had happened at all.  Did that hurt Keefe's feelings?  

He knew that Keefe had a lot of gay sex in his old life, but he thought it just went with being a Satanist.  Was he actually gay?  Was he leading Keefe on, making him think that they could be a couple....but these feelings, love that was nothing like the love of a brother.  Desire?  He wanted to touch Keefe. Remembering what they did earlier, he became aroused again.  Maybe they were a couple already.

Kelvin Gemstone openly living with his boyfriend on his father's estate: The tabloids would love it!  The congregation, not so much.  Daddy Eli preached about tolerance and "welcoming everyone," but this was different.  He might reject Kelvin.  The house and cars were in his name; he had the legal right to call security and have them both escorted off the estate.

They were busy with God Squad stuff all day, a pleasant routine that kept his mind off Keefe and onto...other muscular guys? 

That night, while Keefe was cooking dinner, Kelvin wandered into his study.  (Daddy set it up for him, but he wasn't the scholarly type and rarely went in there.)  He tried to pull a Bible off the shelf, but of course with bandaged hands he couldn't quite manage.

"Need any help, Kelvin?"

It was a light feminine voice.  But the only women who had ever been in the house were his sister and his mother....

He turned: it was his mother, Aimee Leigh, sitting big as life in his leather chair!  Aimee Leigh, the famous Gospel singer -- who died last year!  

You're supposed to be scared when you see a ghost.  Why did he feel so warm and comfortable, immersed in a love so deep he could scarcely understand it?

"Mama, it's good to see you again," he said casually, as if she had been away on a trip.  Suddenly he wondered if he was dead, and she had come to lead him to Heaven.  No, after this morning, he was probably headed to the other place. "Are you really here?"

"I'm always here, Baby.  You know that.  I watch over everybody that I love, all the time, but I don't usually intervene.  You got to figure out things for yourself."

"Wait -- you're always watching?"  He flushed red.  "Then you saw me and Keefe this morning?"

She laughed.  "Baby, I'm not Santy Claus.  All I can see is what's in your heart.  But yeah, I can recognize that kind of joy a mile away.  I felt it often enough when I was with your Daddy."

Ugh, an image flashed fore him of Mama kneeling in front of Daddy Eli!  "Too  much information!"

More after the break

"School Spirits": Ghost girl, her gay bff, and their buds solve the mystery. With bonus pics of el novio desnudo

  

I'm a sucker for teenage ghost stories, as long as they are comedies, so I reviewed the first episode of School Spirits on Netflix:

Maddie (Peyton List) wakes up in the boiler room of her high school.  Her blood is splattered around.  But that's not the worst part: she's dead!  She can't touch or move anything.  She can see and hear the living but they can't see or hear her.  And she can't leave the campus!  

Her self-appointed guide is Charlie (Nick Pugliese, center), a gay kid who died in the school during the 1990s (peanut allergy, not hate crime).  He advises her to not try to remember how she died, since she can't change anything: no communication with the living is possible. But don't ghosts communicate with people all the time?  Maybe in the next episode.  And becoming fixated on the past is dangerous: some band members who died in a bus crash many years ago are obsessively performing the school fight song, over and over.

Charlie introduces Maddie to some other ghosts from various decades, notably Wally (Milo Mannheim, top photo and right), who died on the football field, and wishes that he had managed to shower first;  and the Goth Kirsten, who was murdered by her guidance counselor.  

Mr. Martin (Josh Zuckerman), a teacher who died in the school, offers regular group therapy, with regular homework ("write your obituary").  This doesn't get boring after 20 years because ghosts don't experience time in the same way that the living do.  He also advises Maddie to resist checking up on her living friends, as they will gradually forget her and move on.

Of course, Maddie doesn't listen.  She tries to recall events leading up to her death: she made plans to with her BFFs, Simon (Kristian Ventura) and Nicole, to see Carrie that night.  

Her boyfriend Xavier (Spencer MacPherson) was skipping class, and texted her to join him for a smooch session in his car.  She talked him into going to the movie.  They met the others after class with the tickets.  And that's it.

Out in the living world, Maddie's body has not been found, so she gets "missing person" posters and "thoughts and prayers" in class.  The BFFs think that this is ridiculous: they should be out looking for her.  Suddenly Xavier's bag flies open: he has Maddie's cell phone!  Why didn't he tell anyone for the last three days?  This makes him the prime suspect in her murder. The sheriff (Ian Tracey, left), who also happens to be his Dad, arrests him.

Beefcake: Charlie's "office" is the shower room in the boy's gym, where he can watch an endless parade of butts and cocks (just butts are shown).  Otherwise none.

Gay Characters: Charlie, and maybe Maddie's living bff, Simon. A future episode shows us Charlie’s  high school boyfriend, Emilio, who is now all grown up, married to another guy, and teaching at the school (played as an adult by Andres Soto).  Yes, that's his dick, not completely covered by the Scream emoji

Heterosexism: Maddie and her boyfriend kiss about 1,000 times. Of course, they won't be able to in future episodes, but Xavier has been seeing another girl on the side, so doubtless Maddie will be seeing some smooching.

The Mystery:  "Who killed Maddie, and why?"  It's obviously not Xavier or one of her bffs, and those are the major living characters introduced to date.  I also hope that we have some subplots involving the other ghosts.

Gemstone Connection: Both Milo Mannheim and Tony Cavalero appeared on The Conners.

My Grade: A-

More Andres after the break